📙 Part 2: Describe your favourite food that you ate at a traditional festival/special events

This episode's vocabulary

Variety (noun) - a different type of something.

Recipe (noun) - a set of instructions telling you how to prepare and cook food, including a list of what food is needed for this.

To appeal (verb) - to be interesting or attractive.

Joyous (adj.) - full of joy; very happy.

Evidently (adverb) - used to say what people believe is true.

Ready-made (adj.) - bought or found in a finished form and available to use immediately.

Icing (noun) - a sweet food used to cover or fill cakes, made from sugar and water or sugar and butter.

Voilà (exclamation) - used when showing to other people something that you have just made or got and are pleased with.

Personalized (adj.) - used to describe an object that has someone's name on it, or that has been made for a particular person.

Questions and Answers

R: To be honest, I quite like birthday cake. I know that can take a variety of forms, and there's no fixed recipe, but the taste of it always appeals to me. I wonder if that's a combination of the sugar, which I don't have so often, and the kind of joyous atmosphere of a birthday party that makes it so unique. And evidently, I'm not the only one, since there are various birthday cake-flavoured products that you can buy. So clearly, I'm on to something here, and other companies have picked up on this, as the name suggests, you obviously have it at birthday parties. And you can buy it ready-made, or you can make your own. In my country, usually, close relatives make them or send them. Either way, you eat it on a special day, and usually at a birthday party, unless, for some reason, you weren't able to make it to a birthday party or to the birthday party, then so tradition to save some and give it to the people who couldn't be there. In terms of the recipe, I'd say it's really just a basic sponge cake with jam and lots of icing. I'm a big fan of the ones which are covered in a layer of icing on the outside, since that means more sugar, of course. All you need to do is throw together the ingredients, bake them and then add some candles, and voilà, you're done. Some stores do personalized ones with pictures in the icing or different shapes, which is quite cool. I'm sure you can do your own as well though I've never tried. I'm not a great baker, unfortunately. It fits well with the atmosphere of a party and, well, it's not the main thing when it's someone's birthday. It's obviously a nice thing to have. So I'm always really glad to have one or be offered a slice of one. I even had two at my last birthday, come to think of it, which makes me sound greedy, but there were a lot of people, to be honest with you. So I don't feel so bad about that.

M: What about your friends? Did they like it?

R: I heard no complaints.

M: Thank you, Rory, for your story!